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BeachGrade

Editorial Policy

Last updated: June 2026

This page explains who is behind BeachGrade, how our pages are produced, and the standards every page on beachgrade.org is held to. We publish it so readers, journalists, and search engines can judge our work by a clear, stated process rather than guesswork.

Who runs BeachGrade

BeachGrade is an independent publication built and maintained by the BeachGrade Editorial Team. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or fees to add, alter, or remove an entry. Our editorial judgment is not for sale.

How our content is produced

BeachGrade covers U.S. public-beach water quality: swim-advisory history, bacteria-exceedance grades, and where to stay. We build our pages from the U.S. EPA BEACON (BEACH Act) program and the Water Quality Portal (WQX/STORET): we gather the primary records, process them with documented, repeatable methods, and present them as pages a non-specialist can read. For each beach we pull the EPA BEACON inventory and advisory history, then gather bacteria samples (Enterococcus at saltwater and Great Lakes beaches, E. coli at other freshwater beaches) from the Water Quality Portal at nearby monitoring stations. The Beach Safety Grade is the multi-year share of samples that exceeded the EPA Beach Action Value (104 CFU/100 mL for Enterococcus, 235 for E. coli): under 3% earns an A, over 25% an F. A letter grade is only assigned with at least 20 samples over two or more years; beaches below that are marked “not yet rated” rather than guessed at.

We are upfront that this is a data-publishing operation, not a wire service of on-the-ground reporters. Where we add narrative, that narrative describes and interprets the underlying public data — it never invents facts the data does not contain. Every page is checked against the source, and the methodology behind any score or ranking is documented and linkable.

BeachGrade is produced by our editorial team. Every beach’s grade is computed from public monitoring records (EPA BEACON and the Water Quality Portal) and presented with its data sources. We describe beaches from documented measurements and cited sources rather than claiming personal visits.

Editorial standards

  • Primary source only. Every figure traces back to the U.S. EPA BEACON (BEACH Act) program and the Water Quality Portal (WQX/STORET), cited and linkable on the page where it appears.
  • No invented numbers. If a value is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on beachgrade.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
  • Documented methodology. Rankings, grades, and composite scores are editorial calculations derived from public data using stated, repeatable formulas — not certifications or endorsements.
  • Dated and refreshed. Refreshed as EPA BEACON and the Water Quality Portal publish new monitoring results; grades reflect multiple recent seasons.
  • Corrections welcome. When a reader or the source identifies an error, we fix it — see our Corrections Policy.

Verification and fact-checking

Because our numbers come straight from the U.S. EPA BEACON (BEACH Act) program and the Water Quality Portal (WQX/STORET), our verification work is about faithful processing rather than re-reporting. The detail of how we check figures before publication is described in our Fact-Checking Policy.

Ownership and funding transparency

BeachGrade is part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising. We do not sell personal data. Where an outbound link is an affiliate link, it is disclosed and never changes our editorial judgment.

Contact

Questions about how a page was produced, or about these standards? hello@beachgrade.org. See also our About page and our Corrections Policy.